


Lady Solitude

by Io (thisismygenesis)



Series: The Ladies Boyle [1]
Category: Dishonored (Video Game)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, High Chaos, Low Chaos, Moderate Chaos, Multi, basically that Corvo killed all the targets, but was very ghost otherwise
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-05-30
Updated: 2013-05-30
Packaged: 2017-12-13 08:03:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/821920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisismygenesis/pseuds/Io
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p></p><div class="center">
  <p>
    <br/>
    <em>“It is strange to be known so universally and yet be so lonely.”</em>
    <br/>
    <em>-Albert Einstein</em>
    <br/>
  </p>
</div><br/>Strange how two young girls, both left motherless by the greed of men, can grow up so different and yet so alike. Hiram Burrows’ thirst for the throne not only left the Empire without an Empress, but set Corvo Attano on the path to leave another girl orphaned in order to get to the former Spymaster and Lord Regent.<p>The sole protector of Emily Kaldwin left Constance Boyle orphaned and under the influence of her aunts. Both children raised in an environment where their names are known and tied to rumors before they are done growing into themselves.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lady Solitude

_Everyone knows her name, the name of her family. It is oft spoken of in Dunwall’s upper echelon, whispers of what happened to her mother._

_Her mother’s room is still the same. It hasn’t changed since she was eight._

_She forbade the servants to go in. She does the dusting herself. She tidies it up herself. Like a shrine to her mother’s memory._

_She lays on the bed and just breathes in the smell sometimes when she’s lonely._

_When she gets older, she moves into the room, as if her birthright. She won’t wear her mother’s clothes, though they would have fit like a glove._

_The memory of her mother will begin to fade. All she will have left to remember her will be paintings of her done by the Royal Physician._

_There are rumors about the identity of her father, for her mother had never married. Though they are never openly spoken of in her presence -_ that would be in poor taste - _she hears them before she enters a room or after she leaves a conversation._

_She, the daughter of a murderer?_

_No, of course it wasn’t true. She always knew that._

_She knows much more than she lets on._

_She had been so young when her mother had been taken from her, her childhood was lost. She grew up quickly out of necessity, for she flies in clouded skies._

_But she wasn’t alone. There was another, and that she knew as well._

_They were the same, but different. They were together, but alone._

\------

Party invitations.

Masks, both real and fake.

Money and rumors flow like the Tyvian wine the servants pour.

A feast fit for a king - or an Empress, in this case. It was Emily’s birthday, after all.

The Imperial flags fly high in the breeze, a rich purple trimmed in silver with a matching sparrow soaring above a delicate scrolling _‘EK’_.

She wore white around her collar down to the hem of her pants, holding a mask to her face, shielding her eyes from the setting sun with a very large pale beak and ghostly feathers intricately framing it. Her sleeves were draped in white feathers all the way down to her knees, sweeping around her like wings.

With masks came the inevitable guessing games. She knew them all too well, for even outside of the public eye, one always has to guess if someone is being genuine. Men behind various masks - _hopeful suitors_ \- approached her, attempting to guess who she was to try and impress her.

All were wrong, from the one masked with the hound that fights for scraps to the hideous River Krust - _whoever told him that was a good idea?_

A man garbed in black from head to toe approached her after the last disguise left her side. His mask was one of a badger, something she had not seen before at one of these gatherings. The ‘fur’ - _was it real?_ \- was black and peppered with streaks of grey and white. Black eyes looked at her as he approached and then glanced back into the crowd as he stood by her side, watching figures dance with flurries of muted colors.

“Has the Young Lady... any ideas as to what our Empress’ costume is for the evening?” His voice was husky and hesitant, unfamiliar with formalities.

“I believe that our Empress would be wearing her feathered sigil,” the woman in white answered.

“That’s too obvious, and you know it.” His own mask was slipping. But to him, so was hers.

“I didn’t know you frequented these kinds of soirees. Is there anything I can help you with, Royal Physician?”

At being found out, he yanked his mask off, mumbling about how he couldn’t breathe in it. Underneath, his own hair matched that of the badger’s, streaked with hints of silver and white in his thick black mane.

“I was asked to come, by the Empress as a favor, for I have need to discuss things with her, and agreed before I knew the terms. Never again.” He deeply inhaled the fresh air before he turned and watched the floor once more.

Through her mask, the young woman watched his gaze and saw what he saw. Waverly Boyle was introducing her newest acquisition of socialites - _I wonder which will be the first to fall?_ \-  to the men she had become familiar with in Esma’s absence. Lydia stood by the piano forte, listening as a musician finished a soothing excerpt from Piano Concerto No. 2 in A-flat Minor by Morley’s Jack Fitzgerald and start the livelier piece by Moisei Biryukov of Tyvia, Islamey.

“What do you need of me, Anton?”

“I’ve known you for years, and I knew your mother long before that -”

“These manners and this tameness is so unlike you. Best get to the point before you break into hives.”

“ _What_ are you doing here?”

“I was invited, like you were.”

“Constance, why are _you_ here?”

At the end of his question, cheers sprang forth from the crowd and a woman in white, with dark hair and a silver mask in the shape of a face stood and ascended to the chair at the head of the room. She removed the mask and Emily Kaldwin bowed to her audience as she sat down, a dark masked figure at her side. While most watched the Empress, Constance watched the man standing beside the Lady Sovereign.

\------

_She sat at the window pane, nose pressed against the glass until it was numb with cold. She imagined her breath brought frost and her blinks brought rain. From her tiny corner of the room, she controlled every element of the world outside._

‘Now, it will only sting a bit, but it beats the alternative.’

_But inside, she couldn't do anything. She was home and her mother was still gone. Her aunts couldn’t make up their minds if they had too much time for her or not enough. She was still alone._

_Piero Joplin took her small arm, rolled up her long-sleeves without questioning the cuts on her flesh, and administered the rat plague vaccine with a shot. It pinched and burned, but then faded after the needle was withdrawn from her delicate skin, leaving a splotch of red on pale white and a dull ache. Sokolov had already finished dispersing the cure to Aunt Lydia and was standing by, waiting for his colleague to finish._

_Constance turned back to before the two scientists had entered the Boyle Mansion and interrupted her daydream, not bothering to roll her sleeve back down watching the rain that had started falling after Emily Kaldwin’s coronation. It was as if the city was trying to wash away all the deaths, flooding through the streets where rats had nested only a year before when she had visited her mother and aunts for a holiday. She squeezed the arm Piero had immunized until it started bleeding. She hadn’t noticed the shadow cross over her head because of the tears._

_A thick heavy hand, calloused and rough, swatted away her arms, indirectly smacking the already bruising flesh. The little girl cried out, both from shock and pain. She looked up to see the rugged face of the Tyvian philosopher, glowering down at her._

_She knew that he saw her mother in her face - everyone did. She didn’t know that he knew she mirrored the same emptiness that her mother had always tried to fill. A hollow pain that he had seen in so many of his paintings of Lady Boyle, captured subconsciously by an artist’s hand, noticed as a silenced and smothered cry for help much too late._

“Crazy child.” _He seized the bleeding arm and wrapped it up in a bandage, somewhat haphazardly and crooked. She took the arm back from his grasp and would have started to unwrap it, but he knocked her blonde head, shaking his own when she looked up at him._

\----------

“Why are _you_ here?”

“Aunt Waverly and Aunt Lydia wanted to come and they need a chaperone. They hope to introduce me into society this year, and since this is a masquerade party, they figured it would be a good first glimpse.”

“You’re eighteen now, and wearing your mother’s clothes. Is wearing the mask of the queen’s sigil a cry for attention? You're not a child playing dress up. ”

“Actually, I'm still seventeen years old until the Month of Clans. But you're right - I’m not playing. Besides, my mother’s clothes went out of style years ago. My aunts made sure I never saw them again - they were removed to make room for current fashion trends. And for such a smart man, you are really slow." She lowered her mask and held it up for inspection, holding it as if it was priceless and fragile. "This isn’t the beak of a sparrow - its _much_ too small. It’s the beak of a bird of prey - the costume I wear is a myth of Pandyssia, the _Harpy_.”

As Constance replaced her mask up to her face, Emily Kaldwin stood up from the chair overseeing the festivities. The crowd hushed and she gave a toast, welcoming everyone to the tower, hopeful they were able to enjoy the celebration of her ten year coronation anniversary, and thanking everyone for making this the most wonderful ball for her twentieth birthday.

Ignoring the Empress like only he could, he whispered on to Constance.

“What is being here going to accomplish? You have taken too much after your aunts, you’re almost worse than them. Are you hoping to inflict yourself pain?”

Her eyes narrowed through the holes in her mask. If Sokolov could see her face, he would have seen one he recognized as well as one that was foreign, one of subdued rage smothered in a fake smile.

“It’s not my own pain that I hope to inflict. Now, escort me to the Empress. I need to be introduced to Her Imperial Majesty and my aunts are not up for the job.”

His badger mask in his left, she took his right arm in his and practically forced him through the crowd, still holding her own feathered mask to her face. As they skirted through the many guests, the feather curtains swaying from her sleeves  she recognized faces from her aunts’ functions they held at the mansion, others from accepting personal invitations out.

\----

_A few years after the plague had been cured, she returned home once more on holiday. Her aunts were indisposed and weren’t to be disturbed - which servant was it this time? - she sought out Sokolov’s workshop for the first time to see the researcher._

_She had knocked on the door, years of well-bred training soaked into her every being, but a harsh “don’t come in” was all she heard besides various sounds of bubbling and clanging metal. At first, she was going to turn around and head back to her home. But instead, she opened the door, despite everything she’d been taught by her aunts of not entering where she wasn’t wanted._

_****\---****_

She stopped at several groups of people, out of courtesy, to talk to some other child aristocrats, future members of parliament or cannery tycoons. Just because everyone knew what her aunts were like, they didn’t know her, especially with her mask. She kept it up, hiding her face, a face so like one that had long been forgotten. Sokolov remained silent, his presence on her arm speaking volumes that she was connected to those close to the Empress. She said the right words, laughed at the right comments for an appropriate length of time, and left questions in her wake as to who she was.

****\---****

_The fluorescent lights that burned on whale oil blinded her at first, but after her eyes adjusted she saw Sokolov hunching over a workbench, a large liquor decanter sitting beside him, more than half empty. A loud_ zzzzzzzzing _noise of machinery blocked out any sound. She waited until he put the tool down before grabbing a hold of his shirt._

_The dark scruffy man spun, spewing what Constance suspected were curses in the Tyvian tongue. When he did see her, he only cursed more, in something she could understand but some things a lady would never repeat._

_“What do you think you are doing in here!? Get out of my workshop! **Out, out, out!** ” He started to shove her out the door and back onto the street, but she wiggled around him and moved out of his reach. The older man was already out of breath before he noticed who she was._

_****\---****_

Sokolov and Constance continued to skirt around the dancers in the middle of the large gathering. She was sure to keep an ever watchful eye on her aunts.

Lydia had taken a turn on the piano by now, quite distracted by the musician - you could see the hope on her face that he will meet her standards - but he won’t.

Aunt Waverly and her flock of ladies new into society, were all in a crowd, surrounded by young, strapping men in masks. All the girls wanted was a way to get close to the Boyle name, hoping that through her aunt, they could possibly have a connection to the Men - _more like boys to her_ \- that asked the Lady Boyle to dance, which she did with disinterest. Constance knew that she would take a servant boy to bed as soon as they returned to the manor.

Spectators, for many watched the Boyles, thought Waverly was at the beginning of one of her moods. They didn’t know that she was screening possible matches for her niece. Those with the right connections would be noted of and eventually summoned to Boyle Manor for a meeting. The fun ones were for her to keep.

****\---****

_“You’re that Boyle brat. What are you -”_

_“I want you to tell me about my mother, Esma Boyle.”_

_“Ask your aunts, I’m sure they’d tell you -”_

_“No, they won’t. They won’t tell me what I want to know.”_

_“And what in the Void makes you think I will?”_

_“Because you don’t treat me like a child or like a girl with a dead mother. You don’t treat me like a Boyle.”_

_He hesitated, considering the young girl. It had been enough years to notice a definite change in Constance’s maturity, but she still had a few more years to go._

_“What is it that you’re asking?”_

_“I want to know what happened to her.”_

_“No one knows for sure. One minute, she was in the middle of the next -”_

_“You’re lying. You know more than you’re telling.”_

****\---****

When they reached the steps at the foot of Her Imperial Majesty, they both bowed and straightened.

****\---****

_Sokolov just stared at her, a spitting image of many of his paintings in years past. He had known her mother, both in the society that he was forced to mingle with and quite intimately on those nights when they were both younger. She would lure him in with King Street and they would wake up in the sheets._

_Sometimes, he missed those nights where youth made everything easier. But then, he wished they weren't so fond of memories. He also wished that the Loyalists hadn’t found out about Esma being the mistress of the Lord Regent. By the Outsider, how he hated that man._

_Looking down at a face that mirrored her mother’s made him feel as if he owed a debt, one that could never be fully paid._

****\---****

“Sokolov, you know the whole point of the mask is for you to wear it.” The young Empress laughed at the Royal Physician’s obvious discomfort.

Sokolov, awkward around the who the Empress had become, slightly ignored her comment with a mumbled _‘damned thing is ridiculous’_.

“Lady Emily, this young woman, I don’t think you’ve met her. This is -”

“Lady Constance Boyle, daughter of the late Lady Esma Boyle, niece and charge of Ladies Lydia and Waverly Boyle.” She lowered her masked, curtsied, and merely watched as she stood, as sincere a smile as could fake from practice playing cards at the Mansion.

 **** At the mention of Esma’s name, Emily  _\- very poor poker face, love_  - turned to Corvo at her side, his face masked but his body tensed and she could feel it.

"Pleased to make your acquaintance, Empress. I hope that you may guide me when I come out into society later this year, for I hear we have  _much_  in common."

\---

_“I don’t know exactly what happened. I wasn’t there. But I know who was involved.”_

_Pale eyes widened up at him, surprised to have gotten any information out of him. Sokolov would’ve probably laughed at her if her she immediately became determined, focused, driven like a kingsparrow honing in on a fish skimming on the river. **“Well?”**_

_“Corvo Attano.”_

**Author's Note:**

>  _Piano Concerto No. 2 in A-flat Minor_ is by John Field in real life while _Islamey_ is actually by Mily Balakirev.
> 
>  _"She sat at the window pane, nose pressed against the glass until it was numb with cold. She imagined her breath brought frost and her blinks brought rain. From her tiny corner of the room, she controlled every element of the world outside."_  
>  This comes from prompt that I get emailed to me on a daily basis from Figment.com, I highly recommend it, always some really good ones, including photo prompts.
> 
>  _The Harpy_ idea for Constance's costume is based on [this](http://timeformygenesis.tumblr.com/post/45807657095/kingjackalope-venetian-harpy) post that I saw a while back. I just couldn't get the image out of my head.
> 
> This was just a little something I wrote up really quickly. I started it with a slight idea and then it kind of got away from me. Not my worst by far, but ehhh. Just noticed a WHOLE bunch of parallels between Emily and Esma's daughter if Esma was Burrows' mistress. I figured Esma's daughter, or Constance in my rendition of her, would be considered motherless in either Low-Chaos outcome or High-Chaos outcome. I have more ideas for Constance Boyle, and I may type them up, but I'm not entirely sure at this point.
> 
> I ended up making [a playlist](http://8tracks.com/thisismygenesis/lady-solitude) for this on 8tracks.com.
> 
> Please comment what you like or don't like, etc. They help me to improve.


End file.
